Gilas Pilipinas departs for China Thursday morning with one clear mission in mind – surpass its previous campaign in the FIBA Basketball World Cup.

The Filipino dribblers had their last full practice yesterday, watched some films of their Group D rivals in 2019 World Cup and head coach Yeng Guiao just reinforced the things they’ve learned in a limited time given to the squad to prepare for the 32-nation tournament.

And while on the plane, Guiao and the rest of the team are pondering the game plan they set against Italy on Saturday, the match that could determine their fate in the competition.

Gilas will return to the world stage and brought with them the hopes of this hoops-crazy nation although things were not ideal as injuries and lack of time hounded the preparation of the squad.

“We’re probably 90 percent and we’re hoping we can hit 100 by Saturday,” said Guiao on the eve of their final practice at the Meralco gym, the venue where they split their two friendlies with Australia’s Adelaide 36ers.

“We’ll just try to tie up some loose ends and fine-tune our execution. These are the adjustments we made based on our tune-up games,” he added.

In 2014 World Cup in Spain, Gilas Pilipinas won one game in six-team group with only 24 nations in the competition won by the United States.

But Chot Reyes’ squad gained the respect of the world after giving Croatia a big scare before yielding an 81-78 decision in overtime and had close duels with Greece (70-82), Argentina (81-85) and Puerto Rico (73-77).

It beat Senegal, 81-79, in overtime for the country’s first World Cup victory in 40 years.

With the element of surprise is no longer there and Andray Blatche is five years older, the Philippine quintet will bank on the gameplan that Guiao prepared and hope their three-point shots will fall in against the No. 13-ranked Italians to be bannered by National Basketball Association veterans Danilo Gallinari and Marco Bellineli.

“We have tunnel vision on Italy because we feel that’s going to be our most important game. And all our resources with our scouting and time have been focused on that,” Guiao said.

“The plan is that our chances against Serbia are lesser than our chances against Italy so we focused our resources on Italy because if we lose to Serbia and we win over Italy and Angola, we’re still going to be okay,” he added.

Only the top two teams per group will advance to the next round while the bottom two will be relegated to the classification phase, the position that Guiao wants to avoid.

Serbia is tipped to win the tournament as the United States parades a squad that is lacking in star quality. The Serbians are the second assignment of the Filipinos on 2 September before wrapping up their Group D campaign against Angola on 4 September.

“We’re just hoping we perform close to our best when we perform on Saturday,” said Guiao, emphasizing the point that his team is not looking far ahead of the competition. “Everything we do now is geared towards achieving that peak on Saturday.”

Gilas Pilipinas is the smallest team in Group D with an average height of six feet and four inches while the Serbs are the tallest with an average height of six feet and nine inches.

Aside from Blatche, skipper Gabe Norwood, June Mar Fajardo, Paul Lee and Japeth Aguilar are holdovers of that 2014 World Cup team while playing for the first time in the biggest stage of basketball are RR Pogoy, Troy Rosario, Raymond Almazan, Kiefer Ravena, Mark Barroca, CJ Perez and Robert Bolick.